'Denaturalization,' an American Play
What do you do when your citizenship is taken away? What if you're the one watching it happen to someone else?
Humanity blooms in unlikely places, even in an airport holding cell. Denaturalization is a play that follows Javier (played by Zachary Papatheodorou), a U.S. citizen who faces the threat of denaturalization and deportation without realizing it—at first.
The play takes place in a detention room, and there are only two characters: Javier and a customs officer played by Olivia Nichole Williams. Over the course of the play, competing twin dynamics emerge: The dawning realization that Javier is in danger, and the blossoming compassion between Javier and his captor.
One could be forgiven for initially mistaking this play for an iteration of Stockholm Syndrome, but it soon becomes clear that the officer, like Javier, is a cog in a larger machine. As such, Denaturalization examines how systems dehumanize, alienate and divide, and how bureaucracy relieves its administrators of accountability, a phenomenon that Hannah Arendt referred to as “The Banality of Evil.” Strip that all away, the play shows us, and you’re left with human beings with feelings.
The website describes the play as “near future,” but it seems the future has arrived. Every week, the media belches out grim examples of those whose rights have been trampled, from asylum seekers to green card holders to U.S. citizens. It’s hard watching it. Imagine living it.
As I’ve written before, the vilification campaign against immigrants laid the groundwork for such cruel extrajudicial measures. This play reminds us, at the vulnerable intersection of two people’s lives, that we—citizens, residents and immigrants alike—are not each other’s enemies.
With a 12-minute running time, Denaturalization is part of a 90-minute short-play omnibus at the New York Theater Festival. This is the debut play of novelist Maria E. Andreu (my sister!), who drew from personal experience to write this story. Her first novel, The Secret Side of Empty, published in 2016, is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about an undocumented immigrant in the United States.
Below you’ll find details for the show:
Teatro LATEA
107 Suffolk Street
New York, NY 10002
Thursday, December 11, 2025 at 9:00 p.m.
Saturday, December 13, 2025 at 12:00 p.m.
Sunday, December 14, 2025 at 8:30 p.m.
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Had me at “blossoming compassion.” Really wish we were in New York for this! Just the kind of story we need to hear/watch right now. I hope it runs again when we get back.
Thank you so much for posting about it and for writing this important newsletter.